KGCI: Real Estate on Air - Tribe Marketing with Jill Leberknight

Episode Date: July 9, 2025

You're listening to Expansion, the podcast for EXP agents. Expand your skills, expand your value. Here's your host, Glenn Sanford. Hey, everyone, Glenn Sanford here, founder of EXP Realty and also the expansion podcast, which you're listening to. And today, I'm really excited to have Jill Lieber Knight on. Jill out of Austin, Texas. She's been with EXP since probably.

around 2014-15, if I'm not mistaken, right in that timeframe. 2015. Yeah. And just been amazing leader, positive, always challenging in a very positive way. She loves leading with her heartfelt gratitude and wants to see the world be a better place, is basically my feedback. We didn't talk about this, but this is just who Jill is. And so excited to just to chat about, you know, what she's been doing, also been a four-time icon there in Austin.

Welcome, Jill. Hi, Glad. It's so good to be here with you this morning. Oh, no. Thank you for jumping on and being part of it. So you've been, obviously, I think we just chat briefly, and I remember obviously you joining EXP back in 2015. I was thinking maybe it was 2014, 2015. Yeah, 2015. Agent number 761.

761. I think Elizabeth Riley is your sponsor, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, yeah. Elizabeth Riley and I were visiting with you before we even opened up in Texas. So we were part of the original crew sort of daydreaming forward about what we could be and what could be for all of us. Yeah, yeah. I remember that that room that we all got a number of us together there in Austin. But so maybe just for everybody's benefit, what's your background?

Obviously, real estate is only part of what you've been up to. I've seen you do jazz hands more than once. I have a picture of you four years ago doing jazz hands. I've got a couple of jazz hand pictures with Glenn and a lot of our leadership. I was a theater kid. Growing up, I found the theater at a young age doing community theater, did a production of Annie and fell in love with the stage and thought I was going to be sort of like Leah Michelle in the TV show Glee.

I just thought my future was Broadway and really deep dived into formal classical training as an actor, singer, and dancer and spent a good portion of my life. I'm still performing, but a good portion of my life sort of embedded in the theater world, discovered that I really wanted to inspire the next generation of performers and artists. And so was a longtime theater educator for high school students and college kids. and itty-bitties, I'm sure, throughout the journey, performed on a PBS and Emmy Award-winning PBS TV show for eight years called The Biscuit Brothers. So in Austin, Texas, I'm known by a lot of our Austin community as buttermilk biscuit. That was my character's name on The Biscuit Brothers. It was a music education show that taught music like theory and lessons, but also use music as a gateway to all types of learning. But yeah, I'm an artist.

I consider myself an artist at heart and everything that I do, I bring creativity to it. And that's what I love, whether it's real estate. I'm also a sometimes people call me a serial board member. I love serving on boards and helping organizations and communities identify their mission, vision, and values. And just love bringing my creativity to that. But yeah, theater kid, lots of props. I always have props here.

And even when I teach in the EXP cloud, I've got my train whistle and my clown nose and all sorts of musical instruments. So I try to have fun wherever I go. Oh, awesome. Now, what, so what led you to real estate? It's a good question. I love sharing this story. You know, I was teaching at a boarding school in Austin, Texas. And being an arts teacher, oftentimes when schools get into financial trouble, the arts programs

are the first to go. And they were balancing budgets and eliminated some of the theater and performance and arts teachers at the school that I was at. But I was already working on the TV show at the time and had embedded roots here in Austin, relationships and organizations. And some of the So I was sort of unleashing my creativity in a variety of ways. I didn't know if I wanted to be a college counselor. Because I would have naturally just moved on to the next boarding school in the country and taught theater somewhere else. But I felt I felt strong roots here in Austin, Texas. I'm from Pennsylvania originally, but came down here to get my MFA in acting at the University of Texas at Austin.

So I started sort of daydreaming what I wanted to do next and explain. a variety of marketing things. And my husband saw an ad in the newspaper back when people used to read the newspaper for a place to go get your real estate license at a local school. And they would pay for your training if you worked with them or if you signed up at their brokerage. So I got my real estate license training in five weeks over Christmas break in 2005 just because I was looking for something else to do that could support my arts activities and my arts projects. And it's been, I got to tell you, Glenn, it's been such a surprising journey for someone who grew up in the arts and thought theater and performance was the only thing on my horizon. And it's been really fascinating to discover through real estate the other strengths that I have.

And beyond strengths, the other joys that I have. I love contracts. I love coaching people. I love marketing. My grandfather was the longest serving borough councilman in Pennsylvania history. And he was a politician and a civil servant. And I didn't realize how important serving a community. was to me until I stepped into this role as realtor. So it wasn't anything that I imagined

that I was going to do. And I still, it still feels surreal that I have the title realtor next to my name. But it actually feels like the title and the profession and job, the story that I've been destined to do. So that's just a little bit, a little bit about the background. Awesome. Well, no, thank you. And, of course, in the back of my mind, I'm going, okay, some creative personal branding. So did you buy the domain name, buttermilkisket sells real estate? No, I didn't do that. Didn't do that. That would have, I mean, I buy, my husband and I buy a lot of domain names. That's something that we're always sort of like identifying different projects or creatives or websites or virtual programs. But that's one that we

didn't grab. I'm sure I could still grab it. There you go. It might still be available. Yeah. Buttermilk biscuit. I'm writing that down, Glenn. I'll make sure to credit you in any sort of future projects as another founder of the buttermilk, a co-founder of the buttermilk biscuit online initiative. There you go. So, so you got into real estate. And, You know, and I've mentioned community service. And one of the things I think about a fair bit is that realtor's really are the ambassadors of the communities that they serve. I mean, people are moving in from out of town. A lot of times the first person or the main person people connect with is the realtor who then connects them to other parts of the community, etc.

How does community service and lead generation and even sort of the referral based part of your business, how does that all sort of tie together? Well, I think historically in my career, it initially tied together with video. I was one of the first, I was an early adopter of video for real estate back in 2009. I remember at my previous brokerage, they had invited me to speak at one of their national conferences. And they didn't quite know what to do with me. Even in the coaching sessions that I have at the had at the brokerage, it was hard for them to imagine video as a lead generation activity. But once I started bringing in video, I was educating through my video and serving my

community. My YouTube channel back in the day was, you know, early days was sort of a launching point for that community message. It was while I was selling and marketing properties, I had opportunities before and after to talk about my message as a community servant. I consider myself a realtor as public servant. And, you know, the lead generation portion and referral based is I know a lot of us who've been in real estate for a long time, any sort of sales. There's that old sales saying sales success is all about the number of people that know, like, and trust you. And for me, this community focus really just hones in on that trust factor.

I am an active, authentic participant in my community. I've coined the work that I do as tribe marketing. This community focus, and for years I've been teaching my tribe marketing class in our Icon University platform and classrooms. But I'm an active, authentic participant there with my community. They have a chance to feel and experience my heart, my passion, my compassion, and my focus and mission on the community. And so it's easy for them to jump on the Jill bandwagon and be loyal advocates and fans of my work.

And so it's natural because I'm doing things that I love. I'm doing fun things with my community. And it just makes it easier for them to see me unleash my passions in my joys. And so they see, oh, Jill shows up when she says she's going to show up. She does what she says she's going to do. All the things that we want to teach our kids to do, you know, be impeccable with your word, have integrity. They see me unleash that in the community.

And so when it's time, and another thing that I do is I serve in Texas, I teach them homeowner rights through our property appraisal protest process. So for some of my neighbors, I have been saving them 10, of thousands of dollars every year through analyzing their home and teaching them about how to, you know, do evaluate their properties for their taxes. And so there's just this trust factor. They know that Jill's got their back. Awesome. And of course, you do, I remember watching a lot of the videos. I mean, a lot of them are very much sharing what's going, what's in Austin. Where are the to go, what are the things to do?

You know, there are a lot of community. So in that regard, did you find or do you find that you attract a lot of people from out of area because of the video or is it more local? Both. But I do attract people that are outside of Austin, outside of the city or outside of the state. And the beauty of a video, certainly I learned that, I learned that when I was performing on a TV show. People just come up to you. They feel you've been in their homes, talking with them. And so there is already this trust factor and family factor. So I get calls because of video. I get calls from people that they don't interview me. They immediately ask, can you help me? Because they've been listening to my storytelling. They've been listening to my advice. They've been talking, you know, hearing my education. you know, through video for years. And so when it's time, and I'll get, I'll get, uh, clients reach out from California, D.C., Boston, New York City, even Canada, Mexico. And they,

oh, my friend told me I, to watch your videos and I've tuned in. Can you help me? I need to relocate here. I was watching your video. They reference videos, much like people will reference a book. There's just shelf life. And that, you know, I could geek out in a variety of, of different directions on how how to build videos that have shelf life. But those are the ones that I enjoy more, the ones that have a little bit longer shelf life and not the content every day. And I know there's some realtors that like to build and create more sitting, you know, fresh content or not fresh,

but, you know, regular top of mind day-to-day current stuff. Right, right. Yeah, but unless for some reason the city of Austin decides to entirely change their downtown and move the river, your stuff describing Austin stays pretty relevant for a while. And that makes sense. I mean, that's the stuff that people are interested in when they're moving. People, you know, they originally pick out the communities first, and then they pick the house. So it's community first, house second. And if you know that, then it actually allows you to sort of build the relationships in a different way than if you try to sell the house first and the community second, which is, you know, unfortunately, you know, a lot of agents, that's where their heads at.

Well, I need to sell a house. So they try to sell the house. And they forget that they're really selling a community. And the house is what's the best house I can find? meets my needs in the community that I want to live in. And so you approach it that way, you're going to have a much better clientele who is going to refer you and want to do business with you because you understand them and their needs.

A house is a house, but a community is. And you said it earlier, realtors as ambassadors. So I do consider when I am doing my real estate videos, that I have an opportunity to introduce people to our Austin vibe and our Austin energy and culture, which, you know, people are always talking about it, the key, wondering what that Keep Austin weird vibe is. And so I'm one of those vibes. There is a lot of creativity in Austin. So, you know, I just enjoy unleashing that and being me, being authentic. I'm Jill. I'm a little bit silly, a little bit quirky.

And I try to just make sure that that energy comes out in my videos. Right. So you obviously generate leads from that. How do you manage that? What's your favorite CRM? Do you use a CRM? I have stepped into CRM land in the past two years. That is such a conundrum right now.

I mean, I used to just use old school systems of Excel spreadsheets and labeling clients in an old school way. You know, my Austin clients, you know, just categorizing them. But I stepped into follow up Bossland last year. And I'm I'm a big systems person. That's maybe where the high C, you know, teacher Jill comes out. I have templates and I have systems and automation. If there is something that I am doing repetitively, I like there to be an organized system for that so that as I grow my Austin holistic real estate group or my holistic approach to real estate, other people can replicate what I do. I'm not the only person that can do it.

But I'll be honest, Glenn, I feel like there is no CRM out there that really automates. in the best way. I was doing follow-up boss for a year. I have an extraordinary, I call her my systems architect, Hannah, been working with her. She was a client of mine years ago, and she was so organized in the way that she approached her home search. I said, I don't know how you're going to work in my business, but I want to hire you. And she's been working systems for me behind the scenes for, you know, a decade.

And we've switched and are transferring to Reelvolve right now because they seem to have more automation capabilities with AI, chat GPT. Let me say, chat GPT. And my husband and I are really geeking out with chat GPT right now. And gosh, I really feel like we're, there's a lot of potential and we could be on the verge of AI and chat GPT type programs to really solve real estate challenges. I mean, one of the advice that I've been telling a lot of new agents is don't wait to plan for your success until your success comes. Start planning your daily habits and your routines and your systems day one. I know it's while you have time because once that tipping point hits and success starts

coming in. If you don't have a foundation of systems, things can get real chaotic real quick and realtors can easily just work themselves to death, you know, and health problems start emerging. And we don't want that. And I just, I just am waiting for some entrepreneur, maybe EXP might be perfectly aligned to step into the transaction coordination or the client, management routines. I just think that there could be more intuitiveness with my business. And I remember, I don't know if you, you probably don't remember a first visit that we have.

Do you remember our first visit, Glenn, in the world? In world? No, I don't remember that. I know, I just, I didn't mean to put you on the spot. But I tell the story all the time, Glenn. Like, I remember my first week at EXP and I, was learning our virtual systems and I stepped in and had a meeting with Jason guessing and I was unleashing some of my frustrations and we Jason and I were in a little private bubble and

in you walked you just came in to sit and visit with us with Jason and I and you listened and you said those are those are you know I had very different at that time very community service oriented work that I was doing that wasn't online sales focused in some different ways. And you were interested and you said, those are great ideas, Jill. You know, well, you know, let us know. There are things that we could adjust or change or let's be creative together. And I'll never forget how you came to that visit with, you taught me my, one of my first profound lessons of coming from contribution.

You included me. And at a time, I was like, I'm a lowly little realtor. And Glenn is asking me for, well, tell me what you think. And I just think that there are more opportunities for these CRMs to evolve with this new technology that is emerging. It's just not very intuitive right now, the CRMs. That was a long way of answering that question. Oh, well, no, definitely an interesting.

The reality is AI is going to fundamentally change everything that we're doing in a very short period of time. I mean, chat GPT is good for getting some basic responses and answers and some creative ideas, etc. But the stuff that's coming here in the not too distant future, which could take your Excel spreadsheet or your database, and watch and track and do different things, you know, it will make, it will make life as an agent, maybe not easier, but more systematic. And then it'll be a question of, you know, how much do you want to turn over the activities that you normally do as an agent to an AI? do you want the AI to communicate text message back and forth,

share potential listings to, you know, keep a prospect, you know, warmed up? Or is that the job of a human being and relationship building? And there's no right answer. I mean, there's going to be some people who go, you know, as far to the AI side as they possibly can. there'll be others that are going to be, you know, this is very much a person to person, valley to belly business.

And both will do fine. Some will, you know, I think the AI crowd, if money's the object, then the AI crowd will be able to, quote, unquote, make more. But if relationships more important, then that's where I think is a different set of things that you'll do. I mean, relationship.

the end of the day, I've always said that business is a conduit to relationships, not relationships, a conduit to business. And so if you, you know, and those are two different, it's like two different paradigms. Do you eat to work or do you to, or do you eat to live or do you live to eat? And, you know, so is business to conduit to relationships or is relationships a conduit to business? and they both create sort of different outcomes in terms of just mentally how you sort of organize stuff in your life, etc. But I think AI is fundamentally going to change everything.

A lot of consumers are going to have their AIs effectively doing a bunch of work on their behalf. And we all do that already. I mean, you've got Siri or you know, or you've got, you know, I ask, you know, Google or whatever on your phone. you're using some versions of AI to manage stuff. If you're using your Apple Watch to track your health, you're using AI to do stuff. And it just becomes more and more ubiquitous in terms of our daily lives. But eventually, it does fundamentally change what it means to be a real estate professional

because there is a lot of repetitive, redundant work where I think you mentioned, was it Helen is your assistant? Hannah. Hannah. Yeah. I was thinking, that'd be a great name for an AI. Yeah, that would be a great name.

Thank you for that. I just got a little mini mastermind. I liked that perspective of business as a conduit to relationships or vice versa. I think, you know, that's a great way of, fundamentally sitting down and determining, you know, which side do you land on? Right. In terms of how do you want to, how do you want to focus your business? I just know that I have such a catalog of content.

I am big on documenting my approaches and the style in which I work with clients. That's why this holistic approach has evolved because I am very goal-oriented with my clients. And, you know, there's a lot of custom transactional support and coaching. And so I've been trying to document it so that I can replicate it and have other people join on this mission of holistic support for the client. And I keep thinking, gosh, there's got, I've got to find a way to get chat GPT to, like in my emails or when they hear me saying things like,

like, oh, let's get together for one of our holistic consults that there's automation to send a buyer, schedule Jill with the consult or send out my calendarly and send the buyer form and a few steps that I'm having to train somebody else to do that's just adding more work to our day that I feel like there's a, there's some baton passing that AI can do. You know, one platform you may want to consider, and this is obviously for anybody's listening as well, is check out motion. I think it's used motion, as opposed to Callendly. I like Calum. I mean, it's a good platform, but I've been thinking about the, what Callendley does, which is fine, motion does better.

Awesome. And one of the things you think about, you know, so if you think about as a real estate professional, a lot of times you want to do, you want to time block a few different activities in your business, your prospecting time and maybe exercise and maybe there's a couple other things. Maybe there's meditation. Maybe there's maybe you just need to schedule lunch. Yeah. But what it does is it takes, it'll take the things that are,

that you want to have on your calendar, but don't have to be done at any particular time and allows you to build your calendar around it more fluidly. And so I think about it from a client perspective. Instead of using a calendar link, they could be using the motion link. And it will actually create more flexibility for both you and your client while allowing you to complete the things that you've said, hey, these are important things for me to complete. I love that. And, you know, like one of the other challenges, and this is where the human aspect comes in, is we can have all this great technology supporting us. But if we as humans aren't interpreting the boots on ground behavior that we're witnessing, like, you know, I've been doing this 18 years and you've been in the real estate industry longer, you know, we see, we've seen behaviors of how clients reach out.

to agents. Sometimes they want to be texting you more. They've completely abandoned the voice message. No one wants to call. Everything's in text right now, but trying to help guide that natural behavior into a more efficient and effective way of being in communication. I spend more time in like systems, client communication organization land than I'd like to be. But it's just trying to help guide clients to how are you going to be in touch with me and training them how to do that. Awesome. Well, one last question. And then we'll wrap up here. If there was one piece of advice you could give to an EXP agent, what would it be? Don't be afraid to author your own story, to define success in your own terms and to build a story that you want to live in.

It's the beauty of our profession. We can author our own story from a variety of different perspectives. So make sure you're authoring your story, the story that you want to be living in, living in, the one where you're the hero. I always tell people, if you look around at your life's events and activities, and you you're not, I don't want to say the center of it, but look at your life. Look at your actions. You might be living in somebody else's story. You might be a subcharacter, a supporting character. So author your own story and your own success. And real estate has the beauty to do that, the structure of our profession and industry. And certainly within our brokerage, I know you and I have

talked about it a lot. There's a variety of different ways. I geek out on the education portion in the university at EXP. I love teaching. But there are so many different avenues at different times in your life at EXP to write your unique story. And that's kind of cool. Awesome. Well, hey, thank you again for spending a bunch of time. Actually, longer than normal podcast. We had great conversation here, Jill, and some great clues and how to one author your own story, how to weave performing arts in with a real estate profession, video, et cetera. But you can follow Jill on Instagram at Austin Agent Jill. So that's pretty straightforward.

And until next time, thanks everyone for listening. And thanks again, Jill. Thank you, Glenn. You've been listening to Expansion. Tune in every Tuesday and Thursday for new episodes. Thanks for being the best part of VXP.